قفا نبك من ذكرى حبيب ومنزِل — Imru Alqays

Stop, you two, and let us weep for the memory of a beloved and a dwelling,

At Siqt al-Liwa, between al-Dakhul and Hawmal,

Then Tudih and al-Miqrat, whose traces have not been effaced

By what the south and north winds have woven over them.

You see the gazelles’ droppings in their courtyards

And hollows, like peppercorns.

On the morning of departure, when they loaded to leave, I was

Beside the tribe’s acacias, like one splitting colocynth.

:

My companions halted their mounts there over me,

Saying, “Do not perish from grief; bear yourself bravely.”

؟

Yet my cure is a tear poured forth—

But can one find cause for weeping at an obliterated trace?

As was your wont with Umm al-Huwayrith before her,

And her neighbor Umm al-Rabab at Ma’sal.

Whenever those two arose, musk wafted from them,

Like the east breeze bearing the scent of cloves.

My eyes overflowed with tears of longing,

Down my breast, until my tears soaked my sword-belt.

Ah, many a fine day you had with those women,

Especially the day at Darat Juljul,

The day I slaughtered my mount for the maidens—

How astonishing that its loaded saddle could be borne away!

The maidens spent the day tossing its meat to one another,

And fat like the twisted fringes of white silk.

: !،

And the day I entered the curtained litter, Unayzah’s litter,

And she said, “Woe upon you! You will make me go on foot.”

:

She said, as the howdah tilted with us together,

“You have hamstrung my camel, O Imru’ al-Qays; dismount!”

:

I told her, “Go on, and loosen its reins,

And do not keep me from your twice-tasted fruit.

Many a woman like you—pregnant or nursing—have I visited by night,

Distracting her from a yearling child wearing amulets.

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When he cried behind her, she turned one side toward him,

While the side beneath me never shifted.

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And one day atop the dune she resisted me,

And swore an oath she would not retract.

O Fatim, gently—enough of this coyness;

If you have resolved to sever me, do it graciously.

And if some trait of mine has displeased you,

Draw your garments from mine, and they will slip apart.

؟

Has it beguiled you that your love is killing me,

And that whatever you command, my heart obeys?

Your eyes shed tears only so that you might strike

With their two arrows into the broken heart’s very core.

And many a secluded beauty whose tent could not be approached—

I enjoyed dalliance with her, unhurried.

I passed guards to reach her, and a clan

Eager against me, if only they could conceal my killing.

When the Pleiades appeared across the sky

Like the jeweled sections of an ornamented sash,

I came when she had shed her clothes for sleep

Beside the curtain, wearing only her light shift.

: ، ،

She said, “By God, you have no excuse,

And I do not see your waywardness leaving you.”

I led her out; she walked, trailing behind us

Over our footprints the train of an embroidered wrap.

When we had crossed the tribe’s enclosure and a hollow led us

Into a sandy waste with winding dunes,

I drew her by the two locks beside her head, and she leaned

Toward me, slender-waisted and full-ankleted.

When she turned toward me, her fragrance spread,

Like the east breeze bearing the scent of cloves.

Slender and white, yet not loose-fleshed,

Her breastbones polished like a burnished mirror.

Like an untouched pearl, whiteness tinged with yellow,

Nourished by pure, unvisited water.

She turns away, then reveals a smooth cheek, guarding herself

With the gaze of a mother gazelle of Wajrah.

A neck like the white antelope’s, neither excessive

When she raises it nor unadorned,

And hair adorning her back, intensely black,

Thick as a date-palm cluster laden with fruit.

Its braids rise upward,

While plaits lose themselves among doubled and loosened tresses.

A delicate waist, slender as a braided rein,

And a shin like the smooth stem of a tended palm.

Crumbs of musk remain upon her bed into morning;

She sleeps late, needing no girdle for labor.

She reaches with soft, unrough fingers, as though they were

Sand-worms of Zaby or tooth-sticks from an ishil tree.

At evening she illumines the darkness as though she were

The lamp of a solitary monk at night.

Toward one like her, even the sober man gazes yearningly

When she stands fully grown between gown and shift.

Men’s youthful follies may pass away,

But my heart will not withdraw from loving you.

Ah, many a stubborn reprover over you I turned back,

An adviser tireless in his blame.

And a night like the sea’s waves lowered its curtains

Over me with every kind of care, to try me.

I said to it when it stretched its spine

And followed with its haunches and pressed down with its chest,

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“O long night, clear away at last

Into morning—though morning is no better than you.”

What a night! Its stars seemed

Fastened to Mount Yadhbul by tightly twisted ropes,

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As though the Pleiades were hung in their fixed places

By flaxen cables to solid rocks.

Often I set out at dawn while the birds were still in their nests,

Upon a sleek, massive horse that shackles wild game:

Charging, fleeing, advancing, retreating all at once,

Like a boulder swept down from above by a torrent.

A dark bay whose saddle-cloth slips from the ridge of his back

As a smooth stone slips beneath one descending.

He pours forth when other swift horses, wearied,

Raise dust across the trampled hard ground.

He surges over lean horses; the sound of his breathing,

When his heat boils within him, is a cauldron’s bubbling.

He unseats the light young rider from his back

And whips away the robes of the heavy, violent rider.

Swift as a child’s spinning top, set whirling

By the turning of his hands with a joined cord.

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He has a gazelle’s flanks and an ostrich’s legs,

A wolf’s long stride and a fox-cub’s quick pace.

When he turns aside, it seems upon his shoulders

Are a bride’s grinding-stone or a colocynth-pounding slab.

His saddle and bridle remained upon him through the night,

And he stood all night before my eyes, not released.

Then a herd appeared to us, its females like

The maidens of Duwar in long-trailed robes.

They turned away like alternating beads of banded onyx,

Between a clan chief honored by both paternal and maternal kin.

He brought us up to the leading females while behind them

Their laggards remained clustered, not dispersed.

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He ran repeatedly between bull and cow,

Overtaking them, yet without sweating enough to be washed.

The meat cooks spent the day, some preparing

Strips of roast meat, others a quickly cooked pot.

We returned, and the spirited horse tossed his head;

Whenever the eye rose along him, it descended again.

The blood of the leading quarry upon his neck seemed

Like henna juice upon combed white hair.

When you view him from behind, he fills the gap

With a full tail just above the ground, not scant-haired.

O Harith, do you see lightning? Let me show you its flash,

Like two hands gleaming within a crowned mass of cloud.

Its brilliance shines like the lamps of a monk

Who soaked the twisted wicks with oil.

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I sat watching it with my companions between Hamir

And Ikam, despite the distance of my viewpoint.

By morning it was pouring water from every cloudburst,

Toppling the great kanahbal trees upon their faces.

At Tayma it left not a palm trunk standing,

Nor any fortress save one built firm with stone.

At morning, the summit of al-Mujaymir appeared

Amid torrent and debris like a spindle-whorl.

Mount Aban amid the streams of its rain seemed

A great tribal elder wrapped in a striped cloak.

Over the plain of al-Ghabit it cast its burden,

Like a Yemeni merchant unloading his packed chests.

The drowned beasts of prey within it at dawn seemed

On its farthest edges like uprooted wild-onion bulbs.

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Upon Qatan at al-Shaym fell the right side of its rain,

And its left poured upon al-Sitar, then Yadhbul.

At night it laid its breast upon Baysān,

Driving the mountain goats down from every refuge.